A sort of cold respect for each other grew up between them after the quarrel on Christmas day. To both it had been a warning of the abyss toward which they were tending, and they strove to maintain the outer decencies of human intercourse. This was best done by avoiding each other, having little to say and tending strictly to their own affairs, interfering as little as possible with those of the other. After their long siege of violent quarreling and mutual recrimination, this silence that had settled down between them seemed almost like peace. But at meals, over the corn cakes and rank salt hogmeat, they looked at each other with hard, inimical eyes. When they spoke it was in tones flat and dry from which all life had gone. A dreary oppression, dull, heavy and deadening, weighed upon the breasts of both of them, went with Jerry to the field and stayed with Judith as she shambled about the kitchen. When he came in at night from the field she rarely spoke or looked at him. Silently she slapped the corn cakes and fried meat on his plate and they ate in a hostile silence which was not disguised by the prattle and clamor of the children.
The stimulation that had come to Judith out of her determination to have no more children died away as all stimulation must, leaving her listless and slack. Daily she grew more slovenly about her work. More and more her mind turned in upon itself, indifferent to her surroundings, thinking its own thoughts. Through the dismal, shut-in months of late winter and inclement spring she gradually drifted into that way of life, perhaps because it was the only way in which she could continue to endure the burden of existence.
When spring came at last in earnest and the mud dried up, Hat came quite often to visit her and talked glibly of Luke's injustices, of troubles with chickens and geese, of paper patterns and calicoes and the latest bulletins from the "Farm Wife's Friend," and of new songs that she had learned for the violin. She was rather glad of the break these visits made in her monotony and envied Hat her diversity of interests.
Once Hat came over with the triumphant news that she now had a bank account of her own. She had sold the bay mare which was, she declared, her rightful property; and before Luke could get hold of the money had taken it to Clayton and deposited it.
"An' naow," she concluded, "I'll hev sumpin' woth while to think about, seein' haow much I kin put to it."
Once she brushed a spider from her skirt.
"There, naow, Judy, that means a new dress. It's a sure sign. Jes fer that I'll drive into taown to-morrer when Luke's to work an' buy me the goods. Las' week I seen jes the piece I been a-wantin'."
And in truth Hat blossomed that spring in new dresses, frilled aprons and sunbonnets. Preoccupied though Judith was with her own misery, she could not help sensing a change in the bold, dark, childless woman. Her talk consisted mainly of complaints about one thing and another; and yet she gave Judith the feeling that she was especially well satisfied with life and with herself. She seemed more than usually self-assertive and blatant. She peered with more insistent curiosity into all the details of her neighbor's household. Shafts of excess vitality radiated from her and invaded irritatingly the younger woman's languor and listlessness. Often in her presence Judith was seized by a shrinking feeling as though she was a rabbit and a bird of prey was hovering above her. Sometimes a strange look sprang out of Hat's eyes, a look at once questioning, cunning, mocking, and triumphant. It flashed only for the swiftest moment, then retired behind the mask of impassivity with which country people cover their faces.
It was in April that they took Joe Barnaby's wife, Bessie Maud, away to the insane asylum. For a long time she had been given to fits of destructiveness, when she would break dishes, smash window panes and try to tear up the furniture. These fits had of late been more frequent and violent. One day in April she was seized with this urge to destroy, and building a bonfire in the yard had thrown onto it chairs, bedding, and clothes. She had done such things before; but this time her mania had taken a worse turn. Joe, seeing the smoke from the fire and knowing only too well what it meant, had run up just in time to save the baby, which she was about to throw into the flames. That night they took her away to the asylum. It was too bad, the neighbors all told each other. But it wasn't as bad as it would have been a few years earlier when the children were all small. Now Ruby, the eldest girl, was eleven and big enough to cook the meals and take care of the baby; and at last Joe would know what it was to have peace in his house, and that was something.
One Saturday afternoon in May Jerry had gone to town for groceries and was late getting home. When Judith had given the children their supper and they had run away to play she sat on the doorstep to watch the sunset, leaving the flies to swarm over the unwashed dishes. It occurred to her that perhaps Bessie Maud had not been able to draw comfort out of the sunset and the late twitter of birds, and that was why life had gone so hard with her.